That fateful day in Dallas … on film. JFK remembered.

On this, the 50th anniversary of John F. Kennedy’s assassination, you are no doubt being bombarded by news stories, TV specials, new books and personal reminiscences of that fateful day in Dallas. Forget Jan. 1, 1960; this was the true end of the Fifties and beginning of the Sixties.

But if it’s all getting to be too much for you, you can always retreat to the comfort of the movies ………….. about JFK.

The place to start, of course, is Oliver Stone’s 1991 masterpiece, JFK. With an all-star cast led by Kevin Costner as real-life prosecutor New Orleans Jim Garrison, the film deals heavily in conspiracy scenarios, but any controversy is overshadowed by the performances, direction, writing, et al.

Another take on Nov. 22, 1963, is this year’s Parkland, which follows the events through the eyes of the medical personnel at Parkland Hospital, where the wounded president was taken, the secret service agents, law officers, home movie maker Abraham Zapruder and assassin Lee Harvey Oswald’s family. The DVD came out earlier this month.

The year after JFK, an imagined (?) tale of the man who killed the man who killed Kennedy, Ruby, was released.

To see Kennedy in his fictionalized glory, during a presidential milestone, seek out Thirteen Days. Kevin Costner, again, stars in this highly underrated 2000 movie about the Cuban Missile Crisis, but as Kennedy aide Kenny O’Donnell. Instead, Bruce Greenwood and Steven Culp are near-perfect as the president and his brother, Bobby, the Attorney General.

And go even further back to see how the future senator, president and enduring icon learned lessons that helped him make it to the top. Well, life lessons and lots and lots of family money. PT 109is based on Kennedy’s World War II experiences as the commander of a torpedo boat, PT 109, that is rammed and sunk by a Japanese destroyer. Kennedy helps to save many of his men and lead them to a deserted island, despite his own badly injured back. Cliff Robertson stars in the first film to depict a sitting U.S. president. It came out five months before the assassination.